Hopkins used actively actuated friction pads near the head and tail of the robot to improve its traction, and has found that different terrains require unique kinds of friction pads?a bed of nails for traveling over grass; rubber for carpets.In addition, Gupta and Hopkins used 3D printing technology to create a novel mechanism for expanding and contracting R2G2's body while maintaining a small body cross section. This enabled them to make geometrically complex parts and greatly simplify the assembly of the robot. Other researchers with access to 3D printing will be able to easily replicate R2G2 in their labs.Currently robots that use limbless locomotion do not come close to their natural counterparts in terms of capabilities.
"Unfortunately, we do not yet have access to engineered actuators that can match the natural muscles found in biological creatures," Gupta says, "or highly distributed, fault-tolerant, self-calibrating, multi-modal sensors and materials with highly direction-dependent friction properties. So our design options for limbless locomotion are limited and truly mimicking nature is simply not possible right now."In the short term, Gupta believes robotics engineers are better off "taking a different approach that exploits inspiration from biological creatures." Robots like R2G2 advance the science because they "take a useful feature in nature and exploit it to the fullest extent."Seth Green still can't believe the success he's had with Adult Swim's Emmy-winning series, "Robot Chicken."
"It's so strange to me because it's just something me and my friends make," he told CBSNews.com while at New York Comic Con.Green and his Stoopid Monkey producing partner Matthew Senreich won the 2010 Emmy in the outstanding animated program short format category for the stop-motion animated series they created. And they're heavily involved in the process. The duo executive produces and writes the pop culture parody, with Green doing up to 60 different voices each week. The show's sixth season recently came out on DVD, and Green says it's "jam-packed with all the extras, anything that got cut out, anything that we didn't have time to produce."
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